As some of you may know, at my birthday party I was asked by a friend to run again after many years to help her to get started with training. So I started running and the thought struck me that I always had the dream/aspiration of running a full marathon.  So I signed up for the Paris marathon on the 15 April!   I’ve been following a training plan since October and now that the health certificate has been granted, I was asked why not run for a good cause?

Last year a person close to my heart was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.  I felt as this is not a large charity or well known condition, that I should run in aid of the Motor Neurone Disease Association.  If you'd like to find out more about the illness read on and thank you for supporting both my effort and this worthy cause.

What is MND?

The French Neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot first described Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in 1874. The term Motor Neurone Disease, describes a group of related diseases, affecting the motor nerves or neurones in the brain and spinal cord, which pass messages to the muscles telling them what to do.

Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that attacks the upper and lower motor neurones.
Degeneration of the motor neurones leads to weakness and wasting of muscles, causing increasing loss of mobility in the limbs, and difficulties with speech, swallowing and breathing.

Diagnosis

Motor Neurone Disease can be extremely difficult to diagnose for several reasons.

• It is a comparatively ‘rare’ disease.
• The early symptoms can be quite slight, such as clumsiness, mild weakness or slightly slurred speech, all of which can be attributed to other reasons. It can be some time before someone feels it necessary to see his or her GP.
• The disease affects each individual in a different way; there is no definitive symptom, which would immediately indicate diagnosis.

There is no test available to diagnose MND; it is a case of eliminating other potential conditions.